Dali’s work was heavily influenced by literature. As a result, he used the works of Guillaume Apollinaire as inspiration for this suite. The artist’s original plan for the suite was to illustrate songs by Georges Brassens. However, the singer’s agent recommended so many changes, that Dali shifted themes, and turned “The Trenches” into a military ground, where time seems at a standstill, like a “Soft Watch” rock. The melting clocks are symbols of the lack of meaning and fluidity of time in the dream world. Seeing in the plates a correlation with the 1914-1918 war, long-time friend and publisher, Pierre Argillet, suggested that Dali illustrate the “Secret Poems” by Apollinaire. From then on, the series took a more unconventional, more Surrealist turn, with compositions like Woman with Snail, Woman at Fountain, and Head with Drawers.
It is well known that one of Dali’s more obsessive fetishes is the snail because it incorporates the paradox of softness (the animal) with hardness (the shell). Paradoxically then, the snail, the universal symbol of the idle passing of time, has been given wings and is riding fluidly moving waves.
Drawers symbolize memory, and subconscious and refer to “the idea of drawers”, a legacy of Freud’s concept of reading. They express the mystery of hidden secrets.